Visit to village children and Wat

This morning I decided to go with Joey to Angkor Wat and other places for the day.
Before we set off I went to the early market across the road and bought a bag full of balls and a couple of skipping ropes for the children in one of the villages I visited last time.
I booked the same tuk tuk driver as I had had last time as he speaks good English and is a lovely man.
Our first stop was Angkor Wat to see it in the early morning, by now my 3rd visit but still couldn't help taking more photos.
We then traveled for about an hour by tuk tuk, yes, through the beautiful countryside etc, to the furthest of the temple sites Banteay Srei, it is surrounded by huge wonderful trees, it's a very relaxing place to walk around whilst marveling at the intricate stone carvings.
We then asked our driver to take us to the same village as he did last time, we drove slowly and each time there were a few children playing we stopped and got out to give them a ball or skipping rope to play with.
They were so sweet and politely put their hands together (as you would in Prayer) and bowed their head and said thank you, it was so lovely to watch them all play together.

These children were made up of 3 families, I gave them 3 balls

We did this a number of times and each time were greeted with the same smiles and thanks.

We were invited on a couple of occasions to go and see the old ladies making a kind of fudge from palm juice that had been collected from the tree. The man of the house climbs up the palm tree and hangs pots made from hollow bamboo to collect the juice.
This is then heated in a big bowl on top of their outside clay oven until it turns to a sort of sugar honey, then stirred for quite a while as it cools and then put into various containers, small and large to set, where it is used in cooking or to eat with sticky rice.

Lady stirring the mixture as some local children look on

 We were given some to try that had been made yesterday, and after we had knocked the ants off (they were tiny and how could they resist something so sweet?) and got the art of spooning it onto the rice we quite enjoyed it, and got ourselves a free lunch, well, when in Rome or Cambodia in this case.

This was the lady's daughter, the rice had been packaged into lovely hand made woven palm leaf parcels that they give to the monks so we were honoured to have some

We carried on until my bag was empty, a couple of times I asked Joey to demonstrate to the kiddies how to skip as my boobs went all over the place if I tried to lol!
So, a good time was had by all and we left the village feeling very happy and the children all playing happily with their new toys.

After this photo Joey gave them skipping lessons, they caught on quickly and we had a laugh

Meanwhile locals looked on at the fun, check out the hammock tied onto the front of the bike to carry the baby

Then back to the sensible stuff and off to see the temple that is being over taken by the forest, it was nice to see at a different time of day as the lighting is so different
And then to my favorite 'Bayon' the amazing site that is made up of 39 huge four sided pillars, each side with a face carved into it, not easy to describe or even get over in a photo but pretty amazing when there.
We had to climb a lot of steps as each tower is about 100ft high, absolutely amazing and over 900 years old

These towers were 100ft high so we had a lot of steps to climb to reach them, amazing and over 900 years old

Now that's just childish

There were a large amount of these monkeys around the site, couldn't resist this baby which could barely stand

We got back to the place we are staying about 6pm was conveniently having its happy hour, that actually runs from 10am til 8pm, so, still dusty and sweaty we plonked ourselves down and  had a fresh mango maguerita which is mango, tequila, triple sec and lime crushed together with ice, very nice too, and it seemed rude to only have one so we had another.
Another lovely day..
I will put on the photos tomorrow so if you have read this come back again x